Chapter XXXIII (5)

Being aware of his host's intentions with regard to himself and his habit, he anticipated them, by asking permission to give an account of his life since he made religious profession, and of the reasons which had led him to join the Jesuits,--"of which matters," he said, "I will speak to your majesty as I would speak to my Maker, who knows that all that I am going to say is true." Leave being granted, he narrated, at great length, how, being resolved to enter a monastic order, he had prayed, and caused many masses to be said, for God's guidance in making his choice; how, at first, he inclined to the rule of St. Francis, but found that, whenever his thoughts went in that direction, he was seized with an unaccountable melancholy; how he turned his eyes to the other orders, one after another, and always with the same gloomy result; how, on the contrary, when it at last occurred to him to join the Company, the Lord had filled his soul with peace and joy; how it frequently happened in the great orders that churchmen arrived at higher honors in this life than if they had remained in the world, a chance which he desired by all means to shun, and which was hardly offered in a recent and humble fraternity, still in the furnace of trial through which the others had long ago passed; how the Company, by embracing in its scheme the active as well as the contemplative life, provided for the spiritual welfare of men of the most opposite characters, and of each man in the various stages of his mental being; and lastly, how he had submitted these reasons to several grave and holy fathers of the other orders, and had received their approval and blessing before he took the vows which for ten years had been the hope and consolation of his life.

The emperor listened to this long narrative with attention, and expressed his satisfaction at hearing his friend's history from his own lips. "For," said he, "I felt great surprise when I received at Augsburg your letter from Rome, notifying the choice you had made of a religious brotherhood. And I still think, that a man of your weight ought to have entered an order which had been approved by age rather than this new one, in which no white hairs are found, and which besides, in some quarters, bears but an indifferent reputation." To this Borja replied, that in all institutions, even in Christianity itself, the purest piety and the noblest zeal were to be found near the source; that had he been aware of any evil in the Company, he would never have joined, or he would already have quitted it; and that, in the matter of white hairs, though it was hard to expect that the children should be old while the parent was still young, even these were not wanting, as might be seen in his companion, the father Bustamente. That ecclesiastic, who had begun his novitiate at the age of sixty, was accordingly called into the presence. The emperor at once recognized him as a priest who had been sent to his court at Naples, soon after the campaign of Tunis, charged with an important mission by Cardinal Tavera, primate of Spain.

Three hours of discourse with these able, earnest, and practised champions of Jesuitism appear to have had their natural influence on the mind of Charles. He hated innovation with the hate of a king, a devotee, and an old man; and having fought for forty years a losing battle against the reform of the terrible monk of Saxony, he looked with suspicion even upon the great orthodox movement, led by the soldier of Guipuzcoa. The infant Company, although, or perhaps because, in favor at the Vatican, had gained no footing in the imperial court; and as its fame grew, the prelates around the throne, sons or friends of the ancient orders, were more likely to remind their master, that its general had been once admonished by the holy office of Toledo, than to dwell on his piety and eloquence, or on the splendid success of his missions in the East. But from his ancient servant and brother in arms, in the quiet shades of Yuste, Charles heard a different tale, which seems to have changed his feelings towards the Jesuits, from distrust and dislike, to approval and friendly regard.

Sometimes the talk of the emperor and his guest was of old times, and of their former selves. "Do you remember," said Charles, "how I told you in 1542, at Moncon," during the holding of the Cortes of Aragon, "of my intention of abdicating the throne? I spoke of it to only one person besides." The Jesuit replied that he had kept the secret truly, but that now he hoped he might mention the mark of confidence with which he had been honored. "Yes," said Charles; "now that the thing is done, you may say what you will."

One of the emperor's most curious and interesting revelations to Borja, was the fact that he had composed memoirs of a part of his reign. He asked if the father thought that a man's writing an account of his own actions savored too much of vanity; and said, that he had drawn up a notice of his various campaigns and travels, not with any view to vain-glory, but in order that the truth might be known; for he had observed in the works of the historians of his time, that they were led into error, as much by ignorance, as by passion and prejudice. What judgment Borja delivered upon this case of conscience does not appear. Nor is the fate of the memoirs known. But the work cannot have been large, having been composed to beguile time spent in sailing down the Rhine from Mayence. Van Male, to whose letters we owe our knowledge of this fact, and who was employed to translate his master's French into Latin, praises the terseness and elegance of the style. This translation was spoken of, in 1560, by Ruscelli, in a letter addressed to Philip II., as soon to be published; and Brantome wonders why so excellent a speculation could have been neglected by the booksellers. It is plain, therefore, that Borja is not to be blamed for the loss, if they are indeed lost, of the precious commentaries of the Caesar of Castile. And indeed, though a saint, and an advocate for the mortification of all worldly desires, he was hardly capable of advising the imperial author to put his manuscript in one of his Flemish fireplaces. The stern ascetic had not quite cast off, or, at least, on occasion he could reassume, the ways and language of the insinuating chamberlain. To one of the devout queries of the emperor, he replied in a style of courtly gallantry, which sounds strange in the mouth of the friend of Francis Xavier, and would have done honor to a later Jesuit, who labored in the vineyard of Versailles. Narrating the course of his penances and prayers, Charles asked him whether he could sleep with his clothes on; "for, I must confess," added he, contritely, "that my infirmities, which prevent me from doing many things of the kind that I would gladly do, render this penance impossible in my case." Borja, who practised every kind of self-punishment, and had in early life in one year fasted down a cubit of his girth, eluded the question by an answer, which was perhaps as remarkable for modesty as for dexterity. "Your majesty," said he, "cannot sleep in your clothes, because you have watched so many nights in mail. Let us thank God that you have done more service by keeping those vigils in arms, than many a cloistered monk who sleeps in his hair-shirt."

The new allegiance of the Jesuit did not permit him to spare more than three days to his old master. Duty required him once more to take his staff in his hand, and proceed on his visitation of the rising schools and colleges of the company. While at Yuste he had been treated with marked distinction. Not only did his host arrange the upholstery of his apartment, but he sent him each day the most approved dish from his own table, the only part of his establishment which was somewhat removed from conventual meagerness. The honored guest set forth to Valladolid, with the pleasing impression that he left regrets behind him; and he likewise carried away two hundred ducats for alms, which Luis Quixada had been directed to force upon his acceptance. "It is a small sum," said the mayordomo; "but in comparison with the present revenues of my lord the emperor, it is the largest bounty which he ever bestowed at one time."

John III., king of Portugal, dying on the 11th of June, 1557, state or family affairs required Charles to send a trusty messenger to his sister, the widowed queen Catherine. He immediately bethought him of his cousin and counsellor, the Jesuit, whose order had early gained the ear of the deceased monarch, and who himself enjoyed the friendship and confidence of all that remained of the house of Avis. Borja received the summons at Simancas, where he had founded a small establishment, and whither he loved to escape from the court of Valladolid, to unstinted penance and prayer. The sun of July had begun to scorch the naked plains of the Duero, and the good father was in poor health. Nevertheless, he repaired to Yuste and received his instructions; and then scorning repose in the cool woodlands, at once took the road to Portugal across the charred wastes of Estremadura. This haste, and the heat, threw him into a fever, of which he nearly died in the city of Evora; and when once more able to resume his journey, he was nearly lost, in a squall, in crossing the Tagus to Lisbon. His mission accomplished, he eluded the nursing of the queen and the Cardinal Henry, and hurried back to Yuste, where he probably arrived early in September.

The usual gracious reception awaited him. The nature of his business in Portugal has not been recorded by his biographers. But he seems to have conducted it to the emperor's satisfaction. It was on this occasion, or the last, that Charles returned certain letters addressed to him, by Father Francis, on the politics and politicians of the day, and written at his request, and on condition of close secresy. "You may be sure," said he, on restoring them, "that no one but I have seen them." The confidence thus reposed in the judgment and observation of the Jesuit, by the shrewdest prince of the age, shows how keenly the things of earth may be scanned by eyes which seem wholly fixed on heaven.

The emperor likewise told him of a dispute between two nobles, which had been referred to him for decision, and on which he desired his opinion, because he probably knew on whose side the right lay. The dispute was about a title to certain lands, and the parties were Borja's son, Charles, then duke of Gandia, and Don Alonso de Cardona, admiral of Aragon. Thus appealed to, the father behaved with that stoical indifference to the voice of blood which somewhat shocked his lay admirers, and commanded the loud applause of his reverend biographers. "I know not," he said, "whose cause is the just one; but I pray your majesty not only not to allow the admiral to be wronged, but to show him all the favor compatible with equity." On the emperor's expressing some not unnatural surprise, this Cato of the company offered the very poor explanation of his request, that, perhaps, the admiral needed the disputed lands more than the duke, and that it was good to assist the necessitous.

Borja paid a fourth and last visit in the following year, 1558, to the monastery. He was sent for by the emperor for the benefit of his spiritual counsels, possibly after he had been attacked by his closing illness. For within a few days after the minister's return to Valladolid, tidings reached the court that the invalid was no more. During his brief sojourn at Yuste, his holy conversation and example awakened the religious zeal of Magdalena de Ulloa, the wife of the mayordomo, Quixada. The good seed thus chance-sown by the wayside sprang up in after years, bearing abundant fruit for the company in the three colleges founded and endowed by that devout lady at Villagarcia, Santander, and Oviedo. Almost a century after his visits, the fame of the third general of the Jesuits lingered in the country around Yuste. In 1650, the centenarian of Guijo, a neighboring village, used to tell how he had seen the emperor and the Count of Oropesa on the road to Xarandilla, and to point out a great tree, under which they had partaken of a repast, and he, a child, had been permitted to pick up the crumbs. But of the individual impressions left on his memory by that remarkable group, none had endured for the third generation, except "the meek and penitent face of him they called the saintly duke,"--"_el duque santo_."

In such occupations and in such companionship noiselessly glided away the cloister life of Charles V. The benefit which his health had reaped from the fine air of Yuste, was but transient. It began to decline rapidly in the spring of 1558, after the death of queen Eleanor, to whom he was tenderly attached. He caused funeral rites to be performed in her honor, in the church of the monastery, with all the pomp of light and music that the brotherhood could command. Indeed, funeral services were, in some sort, the festivals of his lugubrious life; for whenever he received intelligence of the death of a prince of the blood, or a knight of the Golden Fleece, he caused his obsequies to be celebrated by the Jeromites. He was also very mindful of the souls of his deceased friends, and the masses which were offered day by day up for himself were preceded by some for his father, his mother, and his wife.

As his infirmities increased, his prayers grew longer, and his penances more severe. He wrapped his emaciated body in hair-cloth, and flogged it with scourges, which were afterwards found in his cell, stained with his blood. Restless and sleepless, he would roam, ghost-like, through the corridors of the convent, and call up the drowsy monks for the midnight services of the church. Once he was asked by a slugglish novice, whose slumbers he had broken, why he could not be satisfied with turning the world upside down, but must also disturb the peace and rest which it was reported he had come to seek at Yuste.

From all secular things and persons he kept entirely aloof. Of the events then passing in the world, nothing stirred his curiosity or his interest but the ruthless crusade against heresy, led by Cardinal Valdes, the fiercest inquisitor since the days of Torquemada. For the great northern Reformation had made itself felt, though with feeble and transient effect, even in Spain,--as the Lisbon earthquake troubled the waters of Lochlomond. Strange questions were stirred in the schools of Alcala and Salamanca; new doctrines were taught from the pulpits of Seville and Valladolid; wool-clad wolves were said to lurk even in the folds of St. Francis and St. Dominic; and Lutheran traders ran casks of heretical tracts upon the shores of the bay of Cadiz. Amongst the persons arrested at Valladolid was Dr. Augustin Cazalla, canon of Salamanca, who had been one of the emperor's preachers, and as such, had resided, from 1546 to 1552, at the imperial court in Germany. Though he had distinguished himself in the land of the Reformation by sermons against its doctrines, and had returned to Spain with untarnished orthodoxy, he was accused not only with being infected with Lutheran principles, but of having "dogmatized," as the inquisition happily called preaching, in a conventicle at Valladolid. Charles was much moved when he heard of his arrest, not with pity for the probable fate of the man, but with horror of his crime. "Father," said he to the prior, "if there be any thing which could drag me from this retreat, it would be to aid in chastising heretics. For such creatures as these, however, this is not necessary; but I have written to the inquisition to burn them all, for none of them will ever become true Catholics, or are worthy to live." This recommendation, seldom neglected, was exactly observed in the case of the poor chaplain. Denying the offence of dogmatizing, he confessed having held heretical opinions, and offered to abjure them. Nevertheless he was "relaxed," or in secular speech, burnt, with thirteen companions, at Valladolid, in the presence of the princess-regent and her court.

A more illustrious victim of the holy office was Constantine Ponce de la Fuente, canon of Seville, and famous both as a pulpit orator, and as author of several theological works, which were much esteemed in Italy as well as Spain. He, too, had attended the emperor in Germany, as his preacher and almoner. For him Charles seemed to entertain more respect; for upon hearing that he had been committed to the castle of Triana, he remarked, "If Constantine is a heretic, he will prove a great one." The canon's "merits," for so the inquisition, with a sort of grim humor, called the acts or opinions which qualified a man for the stake, were certain heretical treatises in his handwriting, which had been dug with his other papers out of a wall. Confessing to the proscribed doctrines, but refusing to name his disciples, he was thrown into a dungeon, damp and noisome as Jeremiah's pit, far below the level of the Guadalquivir, where a dysentery soon delivered him from his chains. "Yet did not his body," says the historian[K] of Spanish literature, writing several ages after, with all the bitterness of a contemporary, "for this escape the avenging flames." His bones, and a carefully modelled effigy of him, with outstretched arms, as he charmed the crowd from the pulpits of Seville, figured at the _auto-da-fe_ which, in 1560, illuminated the burning-place, the _quemadero_, of that city. Another sufferer there, Fray Domingo de Guzman, was also known to the emperor. His arrest, however, merely drew from him the contemptuous remark, that fray Domingo might have been shut up as much for idiocy as for heresy.

In looking back on the religious troubles of his reign, Charles bitterly regretted that he did not put Luther to death when he was in his power. He had spared him, he said, on account of his pledged word, which, indeed, he would have been bound to respect had the offences of Luther merely concerned his own authority; but he now saw that he had erred, in preferring the obligation of his promise to the greater duty of avenging upon that arch-heretic his offences against God. Had Luther been removed, he conceived the plague might have been stayed: now, it was going on from bad to worse. He had some consolation, however, in recollecting how steadily he refused to hear the points at issue argued in his presence. At this price he had declined to purchase the support of some of the protestant princes of the empire, when marching against the duke of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse; he had declined it even when flying, with only ten horsemen, before the army of duke Maurice. He knew how dangerous it was, especially for those who, like himself, had little learning, to parley with heretics, who were armed with reasons so apt and so well ordered. Suppose one of their arguments had been planted in his soul; how did he know that he could ever have got it rooted out? So have many better men of every form of faith learned to look upon their belief as something external to themselves, to be kept hid away in the dark, lest, like ice, it should melt in the free air and light of heaven.

The grave was now in all his thoughts. One morning, his barber, a malapert of the old comedies, ventured to ask him what he was thinking of. "I am thinking," replied Charles, "that I have here a sum of two thousand crowns, which I cannot employ better than in performing my funeral." "Do not let that trouble your Majesty," rejoined the fellow; "if you die and we live, we will take care to bury you with all honors." "You do not perceive, Nicolas," said the emperor, rather pursuing his own train of thought than replying to the barber, "that it makes a difference in a man's walking, if he holds the light before or behind him." The same opinion had been held by a bishop of Liege, Cardinal Erard de la Mark, whom Charles must have known, and whose example perhaps suggested the idea. For many years before 1558, the year of his death, did this prelate rehearse his obsequies, annually carrying his coffin to the tomb which he had prepared for himself in his cathedral.

Before deciding on the step, however, the emperor determined to submit the question to his confessor, Fray Juan de Regla. They had just been hearing the service for the souls of his parents and his wife. Speaking of such rites in general, he asked the friar if they were most effectual when performed before, or when performed after, death. Fray Juan, after due deliberation, gave his verdict in favor of solemnities which preceded decease. "Then," said the emperor, "I will have my funeral performed while I am still alive."

Accordingly, this celebrated service took place next day, being the 30th of August, 1558. So short a time being allowed for the preparations, they cannot have severely drained the bag of dollars, which Nicholas the barber wished to reserve for other purposes. A wooden monument, however, was erected in the chapel in front of the high altar; the ornaments of the convent were brought out and arranged to the best advantage; and the whole was illuminated with a blaze of wax-lights. The household of the emperor, all in deep mourning attended; and thither Luis Quixada brought Don Juan, from his sports in the forest, to learn his first lesson of the vanity of human greatness. "The pious monarch himself," says the historian of the Jeromites, "was there, in sable weeds, and bearing a taper, to see himself interred, and to celebrate his own obsequies." And when the solemn mass for the defunct was sung, he came forward and gave his taper into the hands of the officiating priest, in token of his desire to yield his soul into the hands of his Maker. High above, over the kneeling throng, and the gorgeous vestments, the flowers, and the incense, and the glittering altar--the same idea shone forth in that splendid canvas of Titian, which pictured Charles kneeling on the threshold of the heavenly mansion.

When the dirge was sung, and the ceremonies over, and Charles had, as it were, come back for a little while to life, he told his confessor that he felt the better for being buried. Of a scene which might well have shaken the nerves of the boldest hunter on the Sierra, he said next day, that it had filled his soul with joy and consolation that seemed to react upon his body. That evening he caused to be brought, from the repository where his few valuables were kept, a portrait of the empress, and hung for some time, lost in thought, over the gentle face, which, in its blue eyes, auburn hair, and pensive beauty, somewhat resembled the noble countenance of that other Isabella, the great queen of Castile. He next called for a picture of our Lord praying in the Garden; and after long gazing, passed from that to a Last Judgment, by Titian. Perhaps this was a sketch or small copy of the great altar-piece, or it may be that he turned to the original itself, which could be seen by opening the window, through which his bedchamber commanded a view of the altar. Having looked his last upon the image of the wife of his youth; it seemed as if he were now bidding farewell, in the contemplation of this masterpiece, to the noble art which he loved with a love that years, and cares, and sickness could not quench, and that will ever be remembered with his better fame. He remained so long abstracted and motionless, that the physician who was on the watch thought it right to awake him from his reverie. On being spoken to, he turned round and said, "I feel myself ill." The doctor felt his pulse, and pronounced him in a fever. He was seated at the moment in the open gallery, to the west of his apartments, into which the sinking sun poured his tempered splendor through the boughs of the great walnut-tree. From this pleasant spot, filled with the fragrance of the garden and the murmur of the fountain, and bright with glimpses of the golden Vera, they carried him to the gloomy chamber of his sleepless nights, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise no more.

His old enemy, the gout, had not troubled him for several days. The disorder with which he was now attacked was a tertian fever, likewise a malady familiar to his shattered frame. The fits now were of unusual violence, the cold fit lasting twice as long as the hot. His physician twice attempted to relieve him by bleeding, but the operation seemed rather to augment than allay the violence of the disease. Being sensible that his hour was come, and wishing to add a codocil to his will, he dispatched a messenger to Valladolid, to the regent Juana, requiring an authorization for his secretary Gaztelu to act as a notary for the purpose. The princess, seeing the imminence of the danger, along with the authorization, instantly sent off her physician, Cornelio, to Yuste, while she herself prepared to follow. It is possible that she also sent father Borja, to pay a last visit of consolation to his friend.

The emperor had made his will at Brussels, on the 6th of June, 1554. The codocil is dated at Yuste, the 9th of September, 1558. From the great length of this document, its minuteness, and the frequent recurrence of provisions in case of his death before he should see his son, an event which now was beyond hope, it seems to have been prepared some time before. But as it must have been read to him before his trembling hand affixed the necessary signature, it remains as a proof that one of his last acts was to urge Philip II., by his love and allegiance, and his hope of salvation, to take care that "the heretics were repressed and chastised, with all publicity and rigor, as their faults deserved, without respect of persons, and without regard to any plea in their favor." The rest of the paper is filled with directions for his funeral, and with a list of legacies to forty-eight servants, and many thoughtful arrangements for the comfort of those who had followed him from Flanders. Though willing to send all his Protestant subjects to martyrdom, he watched with fatherly kindness over the fortunes of his grooms and scullions. It is said that Fray Juan de Regla proposed that Don Juan of Austria should be named in the will as next heir to the crown after Philip, his sister, and his children; but if this incredible advice were given by the confessor, the dying man had energy enough left to reject it with indignation.

Day by day the tide of life continued to ebb with visible fall. The sick man, however, was still able to attend to his devotions, to confess, and to receive the sacrament. He would not allow his confessor, Regla, to be absent from his bedside, and the poor man, who could hardly find a moment for his repasts, was nearly worn out with incessant watching. On every Sunday and feast day, at half-past three in the afternoon, the chaplain, Villalva, preached in the church, the window of the sick-room being left open, and the doors being shut to all but the friars. The patient likewise frequently caused passages of Scripture to be read to him, and was never weary of hearing the psalm which begins, _Domine! refugium factum es nobis_. On the 19th of September, towards evening, the patient asked for the rite of extreme unction. By the desire of the prior, Luis Quixada, who was ever at his pillow, inquired whether he would have it administered according to the form for friars, or after the briefer fashion of the laity. He chose the former, in which the seven penitential psalms were read, as well as a litany and sundry prayers and verses of scripture. During the reading of the psalms, it was observed that he joined in the responses of the monks with an audible voice. When the ceremony was over, instead of being exhausted, he seemed to have been revived by it. His appetite for food having entirely failed him for some days, Quixada seized the opportunity of urging him to take some. "Trouble me not, Luis Quixada," said he; "my life is going out of me, and I cannot eat." The next morning, the 20th, he asked for the eucharist. His confessor told him that having received extreme unction, the other sacrament was unnecessary. "It may not be necessary," said the dying man; "yet it is good company on so long a journey." His wish was accordingly complied with; the wafer was brought to his bedside, followed by the whole community in solemn procession, and he received it from the hands of his confessor with tears of devotion, incessantly repeating the words of our Saviour, "_In me manes, ego in te maneam_." In spite of his extreme weakness, he remained for a quarter of an hour kneeling in his bed, and uttering devout ejaculations, in praise of the blessed sacrament, which the simple friars attributed to divine inspiration.

On the evening of the 19th of September, a remarkable visitor knocked at the gate of Yuste. It was the new Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolome Carranza de Miranda--a name which stands high on the list of the Wolseys of the world, of men remembered less for their splendid success than for their signal fall. From a simple Dominican, he had risen to be a professor at Valladolid, a leading doctor of Trent, prior of Palencia, provincial of Spain, and prime adviser of Philip II. in that movement which Spanish churchmen loved to call the reduction of England. During Mary's reign, the ruthless black friar had been a mark for popular vengeance; and Oxford, Cambridge, and Lambeth, long remembered how he had preached the sacrifice of the mass, dug up the bones of Bucer, and presided at the burning of Cranmer. For these services he had been rewarded by Philip II. with the richest see in Christendom; and he was now on his way to take possession of the throne of Toledo, little thinking that his enemy, the inquisitor Valdes, was already preparing the indictment which was to make his reign a long disgrace.

The archbishop was expected at Yuste. He had been long known to the Emperor, who had paved the way for his success by sending him to display his lore at the council of Trent. Charles had afterwards offered him the Peruvian bishopric of Cuzco, the post of confessor to the heir-apparent of Spain, and lastly, the bishopric of the Canaries. His refusal of all these pieces of preferment caused his patron some surprise, which was changed into displeasure by his acceptance of the see of Toledo. Reports had also got abroad, which cast a doubt on the orthodoxy of the new prelate,--of all doubts, as Charles thought, the gravest. He was anxious for an opportunity of conversing with him, partly, it seems, to upbraid him with his new honors, and partly in order to ascertain how far these reports were well founded. William, one of his barbers, related that he had heard his majesty say, "When I gave Carranza the bishopric of the Canaries, he refused it; now he accepts Toledo. We shall see what we are to think of his virtue." In this frame of mind, he had been expecting the unconscious prelate for some time; these feelings of dislike being, no doubt, strengthened by his confessor, father Regla, a bitter enemy, and one of the foremost accusers of Carranza.

There can be no doubt that the ruin of this celebrated man was decreed on evidence which would have been listened to only by a secret tribunal of unscrupulous enemies. It may be that some of his printed theology contained--what theology does not?--passages capable of interpretations neither intended nor foreseen by the writer; it may be that he had pillaged the writings of reformers, whose persons he would willingly have given to the flames. But it is certain that he was a man of unambitious nature, of active benevolence, and, according to the notions of that age, of exemplary life; that he was a scholar and theologian of practised and consummate skill, a wary shepherd of the faithful, a relentless butcher of heretics; that he carried his reluctance to the mitre so far beyond the bounds of decent clerical coyness, as to recommend three eminent rivals to Philip II., as more fit and proper than himself for the primacy; and that one of his first acts, as archbishop, was to advise the king to appropriate the revenues of a canonry in every cathedral in Spain to the use of the Inquisition. Setting aside, therefore, the palpable personal hatred which betrayed itself in all the proceedings against him, it seems probable that he spoke the plain truth, when he made his dying declaration, that he had never held any of the heretical opinions of which he had been accused.

In after days, when enduring the sickness of deferred hope in his prison at Valladolid or at Rome, the archbishop perhaps regarded it as one of the mischances which marked the ebb of his fortunes, that he reached Yuste too late either to explain to the emperor the circumstances of his promotion, or to remove the suspicion which had been cast on his faith. On the evening of his arrival, Charles was too ill to receive him, and the day following, although he was thrice admitted into the sick room, he found occasion to utter only a few words. Those words, few and simple as they were, were some weeks after reported to the Holy Office, with, as it seems, gross exaggeration, by the confessor, father Regla.

On the 20th of September, it was evident that the end was approaching. The few friends of the emperor who lived in the neighborhood had assembled at the convent. The count of Oropesa was there from Xarandilla, with several of the family of Toledo, and Don Luis de Avila had come from Plasencia. They, and the prior and some of the monks, were frequently in the sick-room, in which Quixada kept constant watch. The patient had hardly spoken during the whole day. In the afternoon, when Oropesa introduced the archbishop, he merely told him to be seated, but was unable to hold any conversation. Towards night he grew hourly worse. The physicians, Mathesio and Cornelio, at last announced to the group around the bed, that the resources of their art were exhausted, and that all hope was over. Cornelio, the court doctor from Valladolid, then retired; Mathesio remained, feeling the pulse of the dying man, and saying at intervals, "His majesty has only two hours to live--only one hour--only half an hour." Charles meanwhile lay in a stupor, seemingly unconscious of what was going on around him, but now and then mumbling a prayer, and turning his eyes to heaven. At last he roused himself, and pronounced the name of William Van Male. On the man's coming to his support, he leaned towards him, as if to obtain ease by a change of posture; at the same time uttering a groan of agony. The physician now looked towards the door, and said to the archbishop, who was standing there in the shade, "_Domine! jam moritur_." The prelate approached, and knelt down by the bed, holding a crucifix in his hand, and saying in a loud tone, "Behold him who answers for sin; sin is no more; all is forgiven!" Sad and swarthy of visage, Carranza had also a hoarse, disagreeable voice. On hearing it, the emperor gave signs of impatience so distinct, that the faithful Quixada thought it right to interfere and say, "Hark, my lord, you are disturbing his majesty." The archbishop took the hint, and retired.

It was near two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of September, St. Matthew's day. Fray Francisco de Villalva, the favorite chaplain, now presented himself at the bedside. Addressing the dying man, he told him how blessed a privilege he enjoyed in having been born on the day of St. Matthias, the apostle, who had been chosen by lot to complete the number of the twelve, and in being about to die on the day of St. Matthew, the evangelist, who, for Christ's sake, had forsaken wealth, as his majesty had forsaken imperial power. For some time he continued to hold forth in the same edifying strain. At length, Charles, rousing himself, said, "The time is come, bring me the candle and the crucifix." These were cherished relics, which he had kept in reserve for this supreme hour. The one was a taper from Our Lady's shrine at Monserrat; the other, a crucifix of beautiful workmanship, which before had been taken from the dead hand of his mother Juana, in the convent of Tordesillas, and which afterwards comforted the last moments of his son Philip, in the convent of the Escorial. When brought by the attendant, he turned eagerly to receive them; and taking one into each hand, he remained silent for some minutes, with his eyes fixed upon the figure of the Saviour. Those who stood nearest the bed then heard him say, quickly, as if replying to a sudden call, "_Ya voy, Senor_--Now, Lord, I go." A few moments of death-wrestle between soul and body followed; and then, with a voice loud and clear enough to be heard in the other apartments, he cried three times, "_Ay, Jesus!_" and expired.

In or near the chamber of death were assembled the prior and the chaplains, and the household; the count of Oropesa, his brother Don Francisco, his cousin, Don Juan Pacheco, and his uncle Diego abbot of Cabanas, Don Luis de Avila, and archbishop Carranza. Don Juan of Austria, too, in the quality of page to Quixada, stood by the death-bed of him he was afterwards so proud to call his sire.

On the day of the death, and part of the day following, the physicians and attendants were engaged in embalming the body, and arranging it for the grave. Meanwhile, a leaden coffin was prepared, and likewise a massive outer case of chestnut wood, and a black velvet pall to cover the whole. Sandoval had heard, but gave no credit to the story, of the coffin which the emperor was said to have brought with him to Yuste, and to have kept under his bed. Another version of the tale, he says, made the coffin a winding-sheet, but no mention of either was found in the minute account drawn up by the prior Angulo. When all was ready, the coffin was lowered, by ten or twelve men, through the window which opened from the bedchamber into the church, and placed upon a stage erected in the middle of the isle. These preparations were hardly completed, when the corregidor of Plasencia arrived with his clerks and constables, and asserted that, as the emperor had died within his jurisdiction, it was his duty to see that the remains had been deposited in a place of safety. In spite, therefore, of the remonstrances of the prior, he caused the coffins to be opened, that he might identify the body.

The solemn funeral services, or the honors, as they were called, were commenced the next day, Tuesday, the 27th of October. They were an expansion of the rites in which the emperor had himself taken part a few weeks before, and they lasted for three days. Mass was said each day by the Archbishop of Toledo, the prior of Yuste assisting as deacon, and the prior of Granada as subdeacon, amongst the tears of the whole brotherhood. Funeral services were also preached, on the first day by the eloquent Villalva, on the second by the prior of Granada, and on the third by the prior of Yuste. The imperial dust was then committed to the earth. "Let my sepulchre," said the will of Charles, "be so ordered, that the lower half of my body lie beneath, and the upper half before, the high altar, that the priest who says mass may tread upon my head and breast." But the clergy present being divided in opinion as to the lawfulness of placing under the high altar a corpse not in the odor of sanctity, the matter was compromised by laying the coffin in a cavity made in the wall behind, so that it encroached only on a small portion of the holy ground.

Funeral honors also took place in the presence of the regent and her court, in the beautiful church of the Royal Benedictines at Valladolid. A sermon was preached on the occasion by Francisco Borja, from the text, "_Ecce longavi fugiens et mansi in solitudine._"--"Lo! then would I wander afar off, and remain in the wilderness." (Psalm lv. 7.)[L] It was filled with praise of the emperor for his pious magnanimity in taking leave of the world before the world had taken leave of him--praise which, from the mouth of a Jesuit who had once been a wealthy grandee, must have savored somewhat of self-glorification. Amongst other edifying reminiscences of his friend, Borja told his hearers that he had it from the lips of the deceased, that never, since he was one-and-twenty years old, had he failed to set apart some portion of each day for inward prayer.

Brussels excelled all the other cities of the Austrian dominion in the splendor with which she did honor to the emperor's memory. The ceremonies took place on the 29th and 30th of December. The procession, in which King Philip walked, attended by the dukes of Savoy and Brunswick, and a host of the nobility of Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, was two hours in passing from the palace to the church of St. Gudule. Its principal feature was a huge galley, large enough for marine service, placed on a cunningly devised sea, which answered the double purpose of supporting some isles, emblematic of the Indies, and of concealing the power which rolled the huge structure along. Faith, Hope, and Charity, were the crew of this enchanted bark; and her sides were hung with twelve paintings of Charles's principal exploits, which were further set forth in golden letter-press on the black satin sails. A long line of horses followed, each led by two gentlemen, and bearing on its housings the blazon of one of the states of the emperor. They were led up the aisle of the church past the altar, and the seats occupied by the order of the Golden Fleece. As the last horse, covered with a black foot-cloth, went by, the count of Bossu, one of the knights, the early playmate and dear friend of the emperor, threw himself on his knees, and remained for some time prostrated on the pavement in an agony of grief.

The chapel of Yuste was merely a temporary resting-place of the royal dead. In his will the emperor had confided the care of his bones to his son, expressing a wish, however, to be laid beside his wife and his father in the cathedral of Granada, in that splendid chapel-royal, rich with the tombs and trophies of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip, however, shivering in the rear at St. Quentin, had already vowed to St. Lawrence the great monastery which it was his after delight to make the chief monument of the power and the piety of the house of Hapsburg. At the Escorial, therefore, he united the bones of his father and mother, and placed them, on the fourth of February, 1574, in a vault beneath the jasper shrine, which yet contains their fine effigies, wrought in bronze by Leoni. The occasion was marked by one of those terrific storms, sent, as the monks supposed, by the devil, in the hope of overthrowing that fortress of piety. A grand arch of timber, erected at the door of the church, was blown away, and its hangings of rich brocades, rent into minute shreds, were scattered far and wide over the surrounding chase. Eighty years later, the repose of the emperor was once more broken by his great-grandson, Philip IV. For thirty-three years that prince was engaged in building the celebrated Pantheon, begun by his father, Philip III. On the sixteenth of March, 1654, the dust of the Austrian kings of Spain and of their consorts who had continued the line, was translated from the plain vault of Philip II. to this splendid sepulchral chamber, which gleamed, in the light of a thousand tapers, with its marble and jasper and gold, like a creation of oriental romance. Each coffin was borne by three nobles and three Jeromite friars; the procession being headed by that of Charles V., carried by Don Luis de Haro, the Duke of Abrantes, and the Marquess of Aytona. As the remains were to be deposited in a marble sarcophagus, it became necessary to remove the previous coverings, which enabled Philip IV. to come face to face with his great ancestor. The body of the emperor was found to be quite entire. After looking at it for some minutes in silence, the king turned to Haro, and said, "Honored body, Don Luis." "Very honored," replied the minister; words, brief indeed, but very pregnant; for the prior of the Escorial has left it recorded "that they condensed all that a Christian ought to feel on so solemn an occasion."

Charles did not leave the world without some of those portents in which the men of that age loved to trace the influence of a remarkable death upon the operations of nature. A comet appeared over the monastery at the beginning of his last illness, and was seen no more after the night on which he died. In the spring of 1558, a lily in his garden, beneath his windows, bore two buds, of which one flowered and withered in due course, but the other remained a bud through the summer and autumn, to the great astonishment of the gardener and the friars. But on the night of the twenty-first of September it burst into full bloom, an emblem of the whiteness of the parting spirit, and of the sure and certain hope of its reception into bliss. It was reverently gathered, and fastened upon the black veil which covered the sacramental shrine in the church. In the week following the grand obsequies, a pied bird, large as a vulture, but of a kind unknown at Yuste, perched at night on the roof of the church, exactly over the imperial grave, and disturbed the friars by barking like a dog. For five successive nights it barked there in the clear moonlight, always at the same hour, and always arriving from the east, and flying away towards the west. And four years later, a holy Capuchin of the New World, Fray Luis Mendez, as he knelt in his convent-chapel at Guatemala, was blessed with a vision, wherein he saw the emperor before the judgment-seat of our Lord, making his defence against the accusing demons, with so much success that he received honorable acquittal, and was in the end carried off to heaven by the angels of light.

The codicil of the will of Charles, the only part of the document which belongs to his life at Yuste, is drawn up with a minuteness of detail very characteristic of the careful habits of the man. After a profession of attachment to the church, and hatred of heresy, and after the directions for his burial which have been already noticed, he proceeds to describe a monument and an altar-piece which he wished to be erected in the church of the convent, in the event of Yuste being chosen by his son for the final resting-place of his bones. The altar-piece was to be of alabaster, a copy in relief of Titian's picture of the "Last Judgment," the picture on which he was gazing at the moment when he first felt the touch of death. A custodia, or sacramental tabernacle, was likewise to be made of alabaster and marble, and placed between statues of himself and the empress. They were to be sculptured, kneeling with hands clasped as in prayer, barefoot, and with uncovered heads, and clad in sheets like penitents. For further particulars, he referred the king to Luis Quixada, and the confessor Regla, who were fully instructed in his meaning and wishes. In case of the removal of his body, instead of the altar-piece and monument, the convent was to receive a picture for their altar, of such kind as the king shall appoint. In compliance with this desire, Philip presented the monks with a copy of Titian's "Judgment," which adorned their high altar until the suppression of the convents, in 1823, when it was carried off to the parish church of Texeda.

The emperor next expresses his concern at hearing that the pensions which he had granted to the servants whom he had dismissed at Xarandilla, had been very ill-paid, and he entreats the king to order their punctual payment for the future. He directs that the friars of Yuste and the friars from other convents, who had been specially employed in his service, as readers, preachers, and musicians, shall receive such gratuities as shall appear sufficient to father Regla and Quixada. To the confessor himself he bequeaths an annual pension of four hundred ducats (about 80_l._ sterling), and four hundred ducats in legacy. Of Luis Quixada he twice speaks in the most affectionate terms, acknowledging his long and good service, and his willing fidelity in incurring the expense and inconvenience of removing his wife and household to Yuste. Lamenting that he has done so little to promote his interest, he earnestly recommends him to the king's favor, and, with a legacy of 2000 ducats, he leaves him a pension to the value of his present appointment (without mentioning the sum), until he is provided with a place of greater emolument. He also desires that the Infanta will cause the amount of fines recovered by his attorney, or that might be recovered in cases still pending against the poachers and rioters of Quacos, to be paid into the hands of a person named by the executors for distribution amongst the poor of the village. The contents of his larder and cellar, and his stores of provisions in general, at the day of his decease, and likewise the dispensary, with its drugs and vessels, he leaves to the brotherhood of Yuste, and to the poor any money which may remain in his coffers after defraying the wages of his servants.

These are all mentioned by name, and for the most part receive pensions, except a few to whom small gratuities are given, it being explained that previous provision has been made for them. The pensions range from four hundred florins (32_l._ sterling), conferred on the doctor, Enrique Mathesio, to ninety florins, which requite the services of Isabel Plantin, the laundress of the table-linen. The gratuities vary from 150,000 maravedis (about 45_l._ sterling), left to the secretary Gaztelu, to 7500, given to Jorge de Diana, a boy employed in the workshop of Torriano. That mechanician being already pensioned to the amount of 200 crowns, receives only 15,000 maravedis; he is likewise reminded that he has been paid something to account on the price of a clock which is in hand, and for which his employer is content that the executors shall pay a fair valuation.

These sums were all to be paid at Valladolid. After the funeral service was ended, therefore, on the 29th of October, when the count of Oropesa and the other neighbors returned to their homes, and the archbishop took the road to Toledo, most of the household of the emperor were also ready to depart. Only three Flemings remained behind for a few days to bring up the rear with the heavy baggage. Within about a fortnight after the death of Charles, the Jeromites of Yuste were again alone among the yellow October woods, and the convent relapsed into its ancient obscurity, never more to be remembered, except as the cell of the imperial recluse.